“I just don’t understand how they could do this to me.” I have heard this said so many times over the years and recently have said it myself several times. When someone you have loved for many years decides to act in a way that destroys the relationship you have with him or her, the pain you feel can overwhelm you and trigger a multitude of feelings and questions. You may feel like I recently did: stuck in a pit of quicksand, slipping a little deeper every time I tried to answer another “how could he” question. As much as I would like to know the answers to each of the questions I think of, I have decided it may be best if I don’t understand them and can never answer them. Isaiah 55:3,6-9 says, “Come to me with your ears wide open. Listen, and you will find life….Seek the Lord while you can find him. Call on him now while he is near. Let the wicked change their ways and banish the very thought of doing wrong. Let them turn to the Lord that he may have mercy on them. Yes, turn to our God, for he will forgive generously. ‘My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,’ says the Lord. ‘And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts….'” Nowhere in this passage does God instruct us to study so we may understand the thoughts and actions of other people. Nowhere does He say we will understand what other people do or why they do it. What He does tell us is that we need to listen to Him and study His ways. The more we understand God’s ways, the less we will understand the ways of man including the men or women who hurt us. Stop trying to understand how someone you love could do something that hurts you deeply. If you understand it, you are capable of doing it yourself. You are almost always better off not understanding it and not being capable of it. This is almost always the only way out of the quicksand.
Tag: fear
New Happiness Despite Old Circumstances
If someone had told me a year ago that I would be where I am today, I would have told them they were crazy. Not only would I have never allowed things to spin this far out of control, I would never have been able to survive as things are now.
If someone had told me six months ago that everything that my life was would be gone in three months, I would have told them they were as wrong as wrong could be.
If someone had told me three months ago that I would soon be happier than I had been in over two decades, I would have told them they had no idea what they were talking about and obviously didn’t know me very well. At that time I was too devestated to really, truly function or see any possibility of happiness in my future.
Guess what. In each of these instances I would have been the one who was wrong. When I look back on the multitude of major changes that have taken place during this difficult time in my life, I visualize a big box that my life was carefully packed away in. Some of my life was packed neatly and organized and some was simply thrown into the box with the rest. Regardless of how or when it was placed in the box, each item was very valuable to me. Once my whole life was packed away to keep it safe, someone snatched the box from the place l had hidden it for safety. They flipped it upside down and shook until the entire box, my life, was empty, handed that empty box to me, stomped on much of the contents and then smugly walked away.
I felt lost at first, frozen and unable to think. After some time had passed, I knelt down on the floor and began to try to put everything back in the box, but the box seemed much smaller now. After a while I realized that the broken pieces of my life wouldn’t fit in the box any more. I had a difficult time fitting everything in the box before it was dumped and was now faced with the task of trying to shove every broken piece, big or small, into a space never made to hold so much. It couldn’t be done.
With tears flowing down my face, I removed each broken piece of my life and spread them neatly around the floor beside the box. I gazed upon them and mourned my losses. How could I continue without these pieces of my life whether they were whole or broken? I tried desperately to find a way to glue the shattered pieces back together. I insisted I would succeed, but after a while I realized I was lying to myself. No amount of glue or tape could ever fix these shattered pieces and make them whole again, and they could not fit back into the box I held no matter how I tried. I didn’t know what to do.
I knew I couldn’t go on without these pieces but they couldn’t be fixed. I cried and I cried…a lot, and then I began to pack the unbroken items back into the box. Even these unbroken pieces were marred in some way by scratches, bruises, dents or cracks, but they were still intact despite their scars. As I placed the last of the unbroken pieces of my life into the box, I saw something through the tears welled up in my eyes. My box was full and not because it was smaller. My box had grown in size and the scarred but unbroken pieces of my life that now resided in this box had grown, too.
The box I packed my life into was completely full and it no longer seemed like anything was missing. The shattered pieces on the floor around me were no longer important. I had thought for over two decades that each item I had packed away was extremely important and irreplaceable. I had packed each of my precious “belongings” away to protect them, but all that I had really accomplished was to hold on to them for two decades longer than God wanted me to. These things had no real value and actually lowered the value of the other pieces of my life.
My life outside of my imaginary box has changed considerably. Some of the changes were painful to live through but each and every one of them was needed and has brought me to a new place in my life…a new place where I feel respected, wanted and loved.
Isaiah 43:2 says, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.”
I thought I would not survive the complete change my life has been through; but, as it says in Isaiah 43:2, I did not drown or burn. I made it and I am happy for the first time in many, many years.
Flinching in Fear
Have you ever seen a dog or a child who flinches when an adult moves suddenly and unexpectedly? My new best friend, Lucy, is a 2 year old great dane. I adopted her about a month ago to ease the loneliness during and after my recent divorce. Two days ago I picked up the broom and carried it past Lucy to another room. I thought Lucy was focused on her food bowl, but the moment she saw the broom in my hand she flinched and crouched in fear. I felt so horrible for scaring her. Even though I was not the actual cause of her fear, I was the trigger on that particular day.
There was little I could do to calm her. I put the broom on the floor and coaxed her from her crouching and trembling position. I tried to get her to sniff the broom and become comfortable with it. I had very little luck that night. Lucy will eventually learn that she is safe with me despite the broom I may hold, but it will take time. I’m sure she will need to see me pick up that broom and do nothing but sweep the floor with it for quite a while before her fears are gone.
Physical flinching is usually easy to see and identify, but there are other forms of flinching that cannot be so easily recognized. I realized just this morning that I “flinch” with my emotions. If you have read my other recent posts, you already know I am going through a divorce after nearly 25 years of marriage. The longer we are apart, the more I see how disfunctional and destructive our relationship has been. (Please don’t assume I was physically abused. I was not.) I don’t flinch at a broom or fist or anything physical. Just this morning, however, I came to the realization that I “flinch” emotionally.
I have an old friend who has become a close friend in recent weeks. He and I have spent hours sharing a great deal of the experiences both of us have had in the last couple of decades since we have seen each other. After a time, our conversations have become more personal and I enjoy them. He frequently gives me sweet words of affirmation that would make my heart melt if my emotions didn’t tend to flinch the moment his pleasant words hit my ears. During the last several years, words of affirmation were used almost exclusively in inappropriate ways. They were occasionally used to precede criticism. They were frequently used to distract me from the truth going on around me so that I would believe whatever lie was flowing in that particular moment in time.
I believe my friend is sincere when he speaks his sweet words, but my emotional reaction is almost always to flinch when I hear them and to brace myself for whatever bad experience will follow. I have no reason to have this reaction to his words. He has done nothing to hurt me. Sadly, in this time when my emotions are still so raw from the fresh wounds that have been spoken over the old emotional scars, I flinch in my heart much as Lucy still does when I pick up the broom.
It hurts me to see Lucy flinch as she does, and I’m sure it hurts my friend when I do the same. I feel so bad that he is basically reaping consequences of someone else’s actions. It is not his fault, and it is unfair of me to hurt or frustrate him when he is only being kind and thoughtful. I try so hard not to let the insecurities that accompany the emotional flinch to take over my thoughts in these moments, but I usually fail with these efforts. Sometimes, just simply hearing him call me “beautiful” will trigger a flinch that brings with it a low to medium level of fear. I am so afraid at times to believe his words that I feel almost suffocated by that fear. I am afraid to trust. I am afraid to feel anything emotional. I am afraid to feel anything physical.
My friend has not done a single thing to cause my fears. He has simply done something I am sure is natural for him to do. He has spoken words to melt my heart, but those words have been used by another in a different way. I must find a way to stop the emotional flinching, but it will take time to heal my heart and emotions. It will take time for me to trust anyone but God; but, when I put my trust in God, I find the strength to calm my natural tendency to fear and emotionally flinch with the trigger of innocent words.
John 14:27 states, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your heart be troubled and do not be afraid.”
Fear
What is the one thing you fear more than anything else? You fear this thing so much that you don’t even want to put words to it, to speak it aloud. Now picture that thing in your mind. Picture it clearly and vividly. How does it make you feel to visualize it? What other feelings accompany the fear you feel when you force your mind to visualize this dreaded image…anxiety, pain, sadness, guilt, anger, hate?
I rarely watch the local, national or world news any more. Occasionally, a news program may share a story of heroism, generosity, or compassion; but, more often than not, listening to any news program triggers sadness and fear. ISIS, Boko Haram, Iran, bombings, religious mass murder, shootings, kidnappings, plane crashes and disappearances, storms, rapes, pestilence, drought, famine, economic recession, and a list that can go on forever. These are the stories we hear in vivid details that no one in their right mind wants to visualize. This is the world we live in. This is the world left to us by our parents, and this is the world our children will inherit from us.
Did our parents teach us to fear? Are we teaching our children to fear? As terrible as world events have become, as paralyzing as personal tragedies can be, we all have the ability and responsibility to keep living, keep loving, keep going, and to teach our children the same. Most importantly, we need to teach our children to be happy as they are. Matthew 6:25-27 quotes Jesus instruction to us about fear. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who among you by worrying can add a single day to his life.”
It may appear like everything in the world is spiraling out of control and we may fear that our own lives will be touched by some tragic event, but we should never allow our minds to dwell upon these possibilities. Anything could happen at any time. No amount of fear will truly remove the possibility that something tragic may happen in your life. Choose to let go of your fear. Choose to live today focusing on today rather than to live today by allowing your fear to focus on a possible event that may never happen.
“I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled. Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us. Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights (Habakkuk 3:16-19).”
Giving Your Present Trial to the Only One Who Matters
As stressful as life can become, as scary as change can be, as painful as heartbreak can feel, God can and will get you through whatever you are facing if you will only let go of your troubles and pain, grab hold of His hand and let Him lead you. He can and WILL rescue you. That doesn’t mean things will always change for the better right here right now, but it does mean He WILL get you through it in this life or the next. He is all any of us need.
Psalm 138:
(1) I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart; before the “gods” I will sing your praise.
(2) I will bow down toward your holy temple and will praise your name for your love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word.
(3) When I called, you answered me; you made me bold and stouthearted.
(4) May all the kings of the earth praise you, O Lord, when they hear the words of your mouth.
(5) May they sing of the ways of the Lord, for the glory of the Lord is great.
(6) Though the Lord is on high, he looks upon the lowly, but the proud he knows from afar.
(7) Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life; you stretch out your hand against the anger of my foes, with your right hand you save me.
(8) The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your love, O Lord, endures forever – do not abandon the works of your hands.
Shifting From the Winds to the Eye of the Storm
Have you ever lived in a geographic location where you have to deal with the threat of possible hurricanes? The weather guy has made his prediction that it’s a category 2 now but may strengthen and make landfall as a category 4 in the next 24 to 48 hours. Should you run to the store and stock up on bread and bottled water? Should you go to the nearest gas station and fill your vehicles and multiple gas cans…just in case? Should you evacuate and hope everything is still standing when the storm is over? Should you just stay put and not worry about anything because these things usually end up proving to be much less than predicted?
In recent months, I have found that my life has almost always consisted of preparations for the next “hurricane,” but in the last few years I have not been preparing as I should. It took the most recent hurricane for me to realize just how ill-prepared I really am. Four weeks ago, I moved out. I left my husband whom I have been with for the last 25 years, and I am now living with my 22 year old son. I was not really prepared for this hurricane at all. At first, I thought the storm would completely blow over and dissipate as real hurricanes often do. I was wrong. The hurricane force winds are still blowing all around me as they have done for years, but one thing is very different. I don’t feel those winds. I am sitting comfortably in the eye of the storm. I can see the winds, but they can’t touch me unless I allow myself to shift from the eye of the storm back into the actual storm itself.
Every day I spend out of the winds makes me realize a little more just how hard and how long they have been blowing. I think I have been trying to stand upright in the strongest of hurricane winds for most of my life. For years, I have fought to hold my life together using my own strength, but I have always known my own strength would never be enough. I have always known that God was the only One strong enough to hold anything together, but I have consistently fought giving Him control. Oh, I say all the right things: “I have given everything in this situation to God and will accept whatever He does to fix it.” In reality, I may give it to Him, but I keep my grip firmly on one little corner and eventually pull the whole situation, no matter what it is, back on my own shoulders which have proven time and again to be too weak to carry the burden.
I am a fixer by nature. I fix other peoples’ problems all the time. I have many people who come to me at the first indication of a problem and ask for my advice and help. I’ve been told I give good advice. I help everyone else prepare for whatever hurricane they are living through, but when it comes to my own hurricanes I have consistently found myself ill-prepared. I know where I need to go for hurricane provisions, but I have avoided gathering those provisions because I was afraid I would not find the answers I wanted mixed in with the bread and bottled water. I was terrified that I would read Scripture and pray and realize that God never wanted me where I was and definitely wanted me elsewhere. I have been terrified for a very long time, I think because I have known for a very long time that God did not want me to have ever stepped into the path of these particular winds. I walked right into these hurricane force winds on my own and begged God to calm the storm. Of course, He would calm the storm because He does not condone divorce, right?
God did not calm the storm. He did not stop the winds. He did not provide any way to survive in the storm. Instead, He gave me numerous opportunities to walk out of the storm on my own, but I ignored those opportunities. I was stubborn and stayed just to prove I could and used Scripture in the wrong way in order to excuse my bad decision. I should have left at year two, at year five and at year twenty, but I didn’t. I waited until twenty-five years were spent trying to stand in winds that no one can truly stand in. For now, I will live my life in the eye where the winds cannot touch me. I will use the hurricane provisions that God has generously supplied and remember, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:13)”
Worry
Worry…I think this one word describes my worst problem, my biggest failure. I worry about everyone and everything. I worry about my children, my husband, my extended family, my friends, my coworkers, my neighbors, my marriage, my faith, my job, my finances, my church, my Bible study group, my education, my community, my nation, my blog… I even worry about the fact that I worry too much. I guess you could say worrying has become an addiction in my life. I truly never realized until I typed that last sentence that I had an addiction to worry.
Jesus was very clear in Matthew 6:25-27 when He instructed us not to worry. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who among you by worrying can add a single day to his life (Matthew 6:25-27 NIV).” Jesus didn’t give a complicated sermon. He didn’t weave it into a parable. He didn’t hesitate or stutter. He gave His message clearly when He instructed us not to worry because it won’t do any good. No matter how much time and energy you devote to worrying, you will never gain any advantage in whatever situation you are worrying about. You will simply waste time…time you never get back, time that could have been used productively, time you may have enjoyed, time forever sacrificed on an alter of the great deceiver, that serpent who told the first lie that triggered the first worry.
Worry does two basic things. It tears down and it builds up. It tears down the realities of your present and the possibilities of your future. It tears down your relationships. It tears down your potential accomplishments. It tears down your self esteem, your self worth. It tears down your immune system and destroys your health. It tears down much that should have been and forever robs your future of those should-have-beens that now may never be.
Worry tears down everything you allow it to, but it must have at least some measure of your permission for worry to be this devastatingly powerful. You must hand your authority over your own life to worry in order for it to be able to tear down anything. You made a decision, consciously or unconsciously, to allow your mind to be controlled by worry. Worry doesn’t have a mind of its own. It must hijack yours before it can do anything. How much it tears down is up to you.
The second thing worry does is build up. It builds walls between you and those around you. It builds walls between you and God. It builds walls as tall and as strong as you allow it to build. If allowed, worry will build walls so tall and so strong that you will feel encased in an impenetrable room with no doors or windows. You can hear the activity on the other side of the walls but never be able to live life beyond your worry-built walls.
In his letters to the Philippians the Apostle Paul instructed them, “Be anxious (worried) for nothing but in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philipians 4:6-7 NIV).” Paul knew what he was talking about. He suffered persecution and imprisonment for his faith. When I think of all Paul faced and persevered through because of his faith and service to God, I feel guilty for all the worrying I do. The guilty feelings don’t automatically erase my natural tendency to worry, but they do remind me that I need to pray my way through my worries and make a conscious and consistent effort to refocus my mind and heart on God’s grace and mercies and put my faith in Him.
I leave you with a quote by George Muller, a preacher from a another generation. “The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith. The beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.”
Jumping Roller-Coasters
Picture yourself on the largest, scariest rollercoaster you’ve ever seen. On this particular ride there are two separate coasters. They run in opposite directions on tracks built side-by-side and cross beside each other in a valley between two big drops. From certain vantage points on the track you can see the other coaster and you notice a child who is not properly strapped in, and you fear they will fall to their death at any moment. You don’t believe anyone else can see what you see. You believe you are the only chance that child has to survive. You make the decision. You unbuckle your seatbelt. You brace yourself to jump from your coaster to the child’s coaster as they cross beside each other for just a split second. Get ready. Wait for it. Wait for it. Jump!
Did you make it to the other coaster in time? Did you make it to the other coaster at all? Did you catch the child? Did either of you live? Did one or both of you die?
The last two weeks of my life have consisted of nothing but roller-coasters…the scary ones with no known ending in sight. To make it even worse, railcars from rollercoasters I rode over twenty years ago have attached themselves to these new coasters. You know the kind I mean. The old coasters you told yourself were gone. You insisted to yourself whatever had happened was over and you had moved on to better things…but found later that buried things were not really dealt with. The added weight from these rusty, old railcars has produced extra speed and a rougher ride and has nearly pulled the entire coaster from the tracks more than once in recent days.
I have always been a strong person. I have always been the one people would come to for guidance and help…the one to fix everyone’s problems. I have been asked to jump from coaster to coaster many times in my life with no safety harness and have done it successfully to rescue whomever needed it each time. But right now I’m tired…too tired to jump. The rusty old cars have just stolen too much strength from me and I just can’t rescue anyone else right now. But I feel so guilty for not jumping anyway.
King Solomon figured out years ago that sometimes you just have to let the rollercoaster run its course and not feel guilty. Some times you just have to let the Master handle it without your help. “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which was planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace…I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8,14 KJV).”
forgiven faith 